


Somewhere in Beacon Hills

by ash_mcj



Series: Teen Wolf Songfics [4]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, Friendship/Love, Hurt Isaac Lahey, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Isaac Lahey Feels, Jackson's Sister, Late Night Conversations, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Reader-Insert, Romantic Friendship, Young Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:01:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26661100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ash_mcj/pseuds/ash_mcj
Summary: Isaac Lahey, plagued by PTSD-fueled nightmares, finds himself at his old secret place by the Beacon Hills Preserve that he would go to when he needed to get away from his father as a child.When Scott tells you that Isaac, your best friend, is missing, you know exactly where to find him.[You are Isaac's best friend, but you have had feelings for him since you were children. You know him better than anyone else and know exactly how to help him when life gets too much for him to handle on his own--and that's exactly why he loves you][Isaac's character was not delved into enough in the show and it made me upset]
Relationships: Isaac Lahey/Reader, Isaac Lahey/You
Series: Teen Wolf Songfics [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1928704
Comments: 6
Kudos: 34





	Somewhere in Beacon Hills

**Author's Note:**

> Songfic to "Somewhere in Ann Arbor" by Anson Seabra, but I changed a few words to make it fit Teen Wolf better

Isaac Lahey should have been happy, because for the first time in his life, he was not helpless anymore.

He was a _werewolf_ with enhanced strength, speed, agility, and senses. He learned how to fight and he proved himself against monsters he never imagined could be real. He was no longer weak, like he had felt his entire life.

He had a pack--a _family_ that valued him, where he knew he had a place and was not only protected, but also helped empower them. His father was gone, which meant he never had to set foot in another freezer again or constantly walk on eggshells in fear of getting beaten. This also meant he got to live with his alpha Scott McCall, who he had grown to see as a brother. He would never be able to thank Scott’s mom enough--she had taken him in with open arms and had become like a mother to him over the time he had been living there.

He was living a life he never would have dreamed he could have.

 _Somewhere in Beacon Hills there's a broken traffic light  
_ _Blinking softly for an audience of one  
_ _A boy who takes his comfort in the shelter of the night  
_ _And stays up until the morning just because_

Isaac felt a familiar relief wash through him as he jogged onto the road he had associated with safety over the years. The dark road along the edge of the Beacon Hills Preserve was very rarely traveled, which made it the perfect place to get some peace and quiet. Outsiders would never stick around long enough to find it and those in their town had no reason to use it. With semi-frequent animal attacks and the confusing pathless expanse of woods, the only people who ever really braved the Preserve were the werewolves. He supposed the Hales would have used the road at one point to get home from the main part of town, but that had obviously stopped when the fire burnt the nearby mansion to the ground--which happened to be around the time Isaac began going there. In six years of escaping to that road, he had never ran into anyone besides his best friend Y/N, who he had found the place with and often met him there when they were having rough days.

Isaac sat in the dirt, where the dead leaves and broken sticks made the ground uneven and slightly uncomfortable--just the way he had learned to find comfort in. It was his happy place. Just dark enough to imagine he was no longer in his town. No longer near his father. The only interruption to the darkness came from the broken traffic light that had been dimly blinking long before Isaac ever discovered the street. He figured the town must have thought the Preserve would be more popular to have placed a street light so close to the edge of the woods, then never bothered to keep up with maintenance once they realized nobody needed it. He learned to like it’s steady blinking, though. It was almost like silent music, providing a rhythmic, constant beat that allowed his mind to relax from all the stress he faced on a daily basis.

He watched the traffic light flash and sighed, leaning back against a tree trunk. He knew he should have told Scott he was leaving the house tonight--he knew he would worry if he woke up to find him gone. He hated that Scott worried about him. It made him feel like even more of a burden than he knew he was to the McCall family.

There was no point in sleeping, though, because he knew he would be awake again within the hour--screaming and hyperventilating as he came down from the panic attack his nightmares send him into every night. Scott would run in with his mom and convince him that he was not at his father's house. Nobody was hitting him, nobody was locking him away. Then after a couple of minutes, he would remember how to breathe again, and the fading anxiety would be replaced with guilt and embarrassment for making the McCalls wake up and come to his unneeded rescue. He hated that they had to pick up all his broken pieces, just to have him fall apart again the next night.

He was better off staying awake and watching the street light on that lonely road that attracted broken things.

 _Somewhere in Beacon Hills there's an empty back road spot  
_ _Where he likes to go and look up at the moon  
_ _Ask himself where things went wrong and why he feels so caught  
_ _And hopes that things start changing someday soon_

Isaac should have been happy by now.

His dad was dead. He had an amazingly close family. He was in a safe, loving household with people who seemed to care about him. He was first line in lacrosse. He was popular.

But every minute of every day, he was _terrified_. He was waiting for his life to fall apart. Every time a glass would break or someone would move too quickly in his direction--or even if he ended up in a semi-small space for more than a few seconds, he would get thrown back into being that scared, helpless little boy that he hated being.

He just wanted to be normal--or at the very least, he wanted to sleep through the night and stop having to walk on eggshells with _himself_. He wanted to be able to just believe for a second that maybe the world was giving him something good now. He wanted to heal.

The glare from a pair of headlights startled Isaac and he put his hand up to block his eyes. He didn’t need to see, anyway, to recognize the sound and smell of your truck pulling up. The lights shut off as you parked and got out. There was a series of soft thuds as you threw an armful of several items into the truck bed, and then you were walking over to him.

“I thought you’d be here,” You said softly, sitting beside him. “Scott told me he heard you leave and asked if I was meeting up with you. I told him yes, so I’m glad you didn’t make me a liar by switching up your safe place on me.”

“Hi,” Isaac greeted you, offering you a small smile that failed to reach his blue eyes.

“I’d ask if you’re okay, but that would be pointless. This road isn’t known for that.”

You moved Isaac’s arm and fit yourself against his side, cuddling into his chest and hugging him as he pulled you snug into him. You had always fit perfectly against his side, ever since you were in elementary school and spent every other night sneaking out and riding your bikes to the broken road.

“I’m just...tired. I want to be able to sleep. It’s so frustrating...I don’t even have a _reason_ to be this screwed up anymore. My life is actually going great at the moment,” Isaac complained, tilting his head forward to rest his face on the top of your head. He subtly inhaled, letting your scent overwhelm his senses as he used it to ground himself before he did anything else he would hate himself for--like crying over nothing.

“Just because your abuser is gone now doesn’t mean the abuse never happened, Ise,” You assured him, pulling his arm into your lap and lightly tracing shapes onto the soft skin of his forearm with your nails. When you were kids, he had mentioned that it was something his mom would do when putting him to bed at night, and although you never spoke about it outside of it's origin story, he seemed to be okay with you doing it. It had been several years since you found the trick and he never complained, so you figured he probably liked it. “You’re allowed to be hurt, still.”

“I don’t want to be.”

“I know.”

 _Oh, he's got it all  
_ _He's got the life that they all said that he would want_  
 _And oh, he's got it good  
_ _So why the hell can't he start feeling like he should_

“I miss our late night therapy sessions where we would sit out here and drown our problems in food,” Isaac sighed. “We haven’t had one of those in awhile.”

“Well...you turned into a werewolf, then my brother turned into a kanima and killed your dad and a bunch of other people, and then you joined Scott’s pack and you guys faced the whole Alpha situation, so...y’know...busy schedule,” You said, almost laughing at the sentence that came out of your mouth. What had your life come to in the past year? “I miss them, too, though. I think it’s time to start them up again.”

“We should probably start real therapy at some point, too.”

“I could have told you that a long time ago. The power of water bottles, granola bars, and apples can only go so far.”

“Don’t forget that super soft blanket with the basketballs on it that you used to steal from Jackson so we didn’t freeze to death out here. Or my ripped sheet I’d bring for us to sit on.”

“That tear-soaked, dirt-covered, secret-keeping sheet was the real MVP of our late night therapy,” You agreed.

“It was the therapist,” Isaac chuckled into your hair.

You and Isaac sat there in silence for a few minutes, listening to the distant sounds of the birds up in the trees and the small creatures rustling the dead leaves on the ground in the woods behind you. You missed the broken road. You missed talking to Isaac about something other than the shitshow that was the supernatural world you had both found yourself in the middle of. You remembered coming here as a child with him. It was so much worse back then, yet so much simpler.

“It’s like three in the morning,” Isaac finally said. “You know we have school tomorrow, right?”

“You say that like we’re actually going to school after staying out here all night,” You snorted. “We ate bad Taco Bell--can’t go to school if we can’t leave the bathroom.”

“I guess Scott and Jackson can tell us whatever we missed.”

“Scott and Jackson are both idiots and don’t pay attention or write down the homework at all. We should ask Stiles.”

“That’s true,” Isaac said. “I don’t know what I would do without you.”

“You would be going to school bright and early with the darkest bags under your eyes that Beacon Hills would ever have seen.”

“I’m serious. You’ve always been there for me and I...I can’t believe you’ve put up with me for so long. I appreciate it.”

“Isaac Lahey, putting up with you is literally the highlight of my life. If you think that I spent my entire childhood and teenage years so far freezing my ass off every few nights to sit on some back road by the woods and watch a broken traffic light blink for anyone other than you, you’re crazy. I think I’ve been pretty obvious in the fact that I’m hopelessly in love with you and you’re kinda stuck with me, because I haven’t managed to move on from you since I was nine years old. It’s part of my personality now, I think.”

“You’re my anchor,” Isaac told you hesitantly. “When I feel myself losing control--like, in a werewolf way or just emotionally--I think of you... how you smell, how you sound. It grounds me. I’ve loved you since you kicked Jackson’s ass in third grade for pushing me.”

“I know...I just wanted you to know, too.”

“You never dated anyone and sneaked out of your house to hang out with me quite a bit...I figured you either liked me or you really liked rock-hard Walmart granola bars and Dasani water.”

“Yeah...I don’t know if I can ever choke down another one of either of those again, honestly.”

“Y/N, I can’t be in a relationship right now. So...I guess this whole conversation didn't even matter, but I wish it did. God, I wish it did. But I’m no closer to figuring myself out now than I was years ago when we sat here and I can’t handle a relationship right now because I really don’t want to screw it up--not with you. I can’t risk it with you until I sort my head out more.”

“The conversation does matter...it matters to me. You’re my best friend and I don’t want to start a relationship if we aren’t both ready to give it our all, because I can’t lose you. I know you’re my person, so I don’t mind waiting as long as you need. I want to say I understand what you’re going through, but I don’t...I think the only one who can really understand is you. You know I’m here for you, though. I’ve been waiting this long, so I can wait longer. We have our whole lives to figure it out, y’know? And when you feel better...I’ll be here. Then we can go from there. There’s plenty of time for more late night therapy sessions in the meantime.”

You tilted your head back to be able to look up at him and he smiled warmly at you, before pressing a kiss to your forehead. You hummed happily and shifted in his arms to face him better. You ran your hand up his chest and slid it over his shoulder to the back of his head to play with the shorter hairs at the base of his neck. Before your nerves could talk you out of it, you pulled him down and pressed your lips against his. He tightened the arm that was already around you and moved his other hand up into your hair, deepening the kiss and dipping his tongue into your mouth. You both melted against each other as the passion quickly turned to a slower, comfortable pace and you both just held each other as you kissed lazily. There were no words whispered to each other, but he was still communicating with you.

_Thank you for understanding. Thank you for being there for me. I love you._

“If you wanted to start those late night therapy sessions tonight,” You started, pulling back just enough to be able to look at him. “I came prepared. There’s blankets, pillows, and a bag filled with chips and Gatorade from the gas station I hit on the way over here in the bed of my truck.”

“The white Gatorade?” He asked hopefully, to which you rolled your eyes.

“You really think I was gonna even bother showing up without your favorite Gatorade? There are like four Glacier Cherry bottles in that bag.” You laughed. Without another word, Isaac stood and hauled you up by your hands.

You walked to your truck bed and dropped the tailgate down so the two of you could climb in. You grabbed the first blanket and laid it in the bottom of the bed, then positioned the two pillows you had brought. He joined you and went straight for the plastic bag in the corner, which did not surprise you in the slightest.

“Ooh, you got those hot Doritos,” Isaac noticed, pulling the bag out and opening it.

You got comfortable--or as comfortable as the metal bottom of your truck bed would allow--and pulled him down beside you, before putting the thicker, warmer blanket over the two of you. Isaac smiled as he traced the familiar basketball designs on the fuzzy material.

You spent the rest of the night talking and eating, with the occasional kisses shared here and there. Isaac's mental state was not always the best--but from experience, he knew for a fact that he would be okay when he was curled up with you under the moonlight.

**Author's Note:**

> I love Isaac so much, you guys. He deserves so much better than life has handed him.


End file.
